LIGATION – After Gods

vote
8.0

• Bands:
  LIGATION
• Duration: 00:41:10
• Available from: 01/23/2026
• Label:

• Personal Records

In this 2026 that has just begun, the first releases are also arriving and for some, like Ligation, it is precisely the debut.
This name is new to many, having only released two splits, with Hail Conjurer and Gravavgrav, but among its ranks there is a character like Marko Neuman, who some may remember for his militancy in bands like Convocation, Sum of R, Waste Of Space Orchestra and Dark Buddha Rising.

The group, originally from Finland, offers us a strange mixture of death, doom and noise digressions: elephantine riffs with very low tuned guitars, cavernous growls and various dissonances scattered between the songs. We can find an excellent example of all this in the song “Turmoil in Everest”, with the synths impacting the ending and various noises obtained with the pedals.
A proposal of this kind turns out to be very much indebted to some groups that introduced these solutions in the mid-90s such as Disharmonic Orchestra and especially Pan.Thy.Monium (i.e. those sounds that were 'too strange for metalheads' but 'too metal for the average Ipecac Recordings fan').
The basis – for Ligation as well as for the names mentioned above – is still death metal, but the production is much more crystalline and suitable, as it should be, for a 2026 album. From a vocal point of view, the reference that might come to mind is that of Mikael Åkerfeldt in the growl, while there are several parts with distorted hardcore-like vocals.
As one might expect, we are very far from the song form: the compositional objective is to transport the listener into a state of catharsis, enveloped by the heaviness of the riffs, and by these layers of noise (as we can notice in songs like “Reflection” which, in its very slow pace, ends up in a sea of ​​noise). The final platter is therefore made up of five songs, for a more than acceptable duration (forty minutes, which also includes three bonus tracks, taken from the splits mentioned above).

An excellent debut, very smooth in the rhythm of the writing, even though we are talking about sounds that are difficult for the general public to digest. The mix of styles that our team have chosen to propose, although as mentioned above is not totally original, is not proposed so frequently in today's panorama. A further point in favor is knowing how to write very elaborate pieces without being either heavy or redundant (which is the main risk when you decide to go off track and from predictability, which is absolutely avoided here). Ligation therefore proves to be a group to focus on for the future and to take into consideration, certainly an interesting revelation for those who love death metal but also expect something more from this genre.